Kempton Park Information

About Kempton Park

Kempton Park is a city on the East Rand in the Gauteng province, South Africa. Formerly an independent municipality in the Transvaal, Kempton Park no longer has its own municipal government, and has been part of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality since 2000. Kempton Park is located north-east of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, and south of Pretoria, the administrative capital. It is situated next to Tembisa, one of the largest townships in South Africa. The name of the city is sometimes written as "Kemptonpark" in Afrikaans.

It was established in 1903 when Karl Wolff sub-divided a portion of his Zuurfontein farm into residential stands and named the new town Kempten after the German town in Bavaria of his birth. The name was anglicised into Kempton Park.

OR Tambo International Airport (Africa's busiest airport) is located in Kempton Park. In 1952 the airport, then known as Jan Smuts International Airport, was built on land next to the community, and opened in 1953. The airport's name was changed to Johannesburg International Airport in the late 1990s and then to OR Tambo International Airport in 2006.

The city has six major high schools (secondary schools): Jeugland Hoërskool, Kempton Hoër (Kempton High), Rhodes field High School, Birchleigh Hoër, Norkem Park High and Sir Pierre van Ryneveld